Smithy

I'm back from San Diego, where I had excellent meals and a couple of feasts. The Returning Peace Corps Volunteers of San Diego had their annual "Taste the World" event, and we ate ourselves silly sampling foods even though each serving was small. I especially liked a Peruvian Aji de Gallina (a spicy chicken stew) and was fortunate enough to get the recipe from the chef, so you may see it appear in these pages at some point. I also particularly liked a Mexican lime soup -- tart, tangy, delicious, with "add your own" cilantro and fried tortilla strips. That chef hasn't responded to my request for a recipe, at least not yet. When I Google the dish "Sopa de Lima" I find several different versions, so I hope I don't have to start trying to reproduce that particular soup without some guidance. But hey, I'll try if I have to! On another day we met up with friends at a little family-owned Italian restaurant, Cafe Luna. The sign at their door asked people to please keep their phones off, and I took that to mean I shouldn't be taking photos. Besides, the conversation was too brisk. But we all had variations on the soup and salad theme, where the soup was Italian Wedding soup. (Finally, I got to try it! Delicious!) The bread was fabulous, and they had a house-made dipping sauce that they called either Celestial Sauce or Celestrial Sauce. We practically went after that stuff with a spoon: it was unctuous, savory, tomatoey, slightly spicy. I can't remember whether the proprietor or her husband or father-in-law made up the recipe in the first place, but it's clearly a hit. The proprietor, who's in her 10th year of ownership now, was happy to list the ingredients. I didn't ask her for proportions. I foresee many happy experiments. The ingredients are olive oil, sundried tomatoes, anchovies, parmesan, roasted garlic, canola oil, salt and pepper, and Herbes de Provence. She said the canola is needed to keep the stuff from getting too thick. The sauce is blended but still has a slight chunkiness: not as smooth as catsup, not a coarse as salsa. If you're ever in the northern end of San Diego, go check out Cafe Luna. I hope to go there again, many times.

Porter Creek was one of our favorite wineries also, when we used to go touring and tasting there. I think it was the Porter Creek fellow running the tasting room who quipped, when we commented that we hated to waste wine by using the spit bucket, "No problems. We send it to the next valley and they sell it as Napa Cuvee!"

I bought a new fifth-wheel trailer recently, and hit the road in it late in January. Look what caught up to me in the mail! Yes, they're very good. Chocolate chip cookies. My favorite!

I do love Zinfandel. I'll have to keep an eye out for L.A. Cetto and, for that matter, Valle de Guadalupe, but I seriously doubt I'll see them where I shop. It isn't just that it's north of the border; it's also that many wines seem to have small distribution areas. Please keep us posted, though! We can be inspired and tempted! And some of us can cross southward and shop there! (I wonder if this would be available in Algodones, Baja California, for example. Any idea about that?)

Breakfast with friends. I often have yogurt, but rarely have the mixed nuts (Costco) and both fresh and frozen fruit to put on it. The yogurt is good enough plain, but this raises it to excellent.

That's quite the well-traveled chorizo!

Yes, Norm - it all looks wonderful! Too bad about the Muslim friends who couldn't partake.

Clever plating! How did you get those heart-shaped sear marks on the steak?

Interesting that a Galette des Rois is usually done for Epiphany, and our King's Cake is usually done for Mardi Gras. Funny old world, idn't it? 😀

They look excellent! And they look like a wonderful midwinter spirit-lifter. Did you do anything to prepare them, other than (I assume) wash and slice?

Yesterday was a day of finishing business, and taking my leave of the place. I visited favorite places one last time for the nonce, cleaned the trailer, admired the scenery, and placed some of my darling's ashes with trees we'd particularly admired for their character and strength over challenging decades. (No, I didn't leave the box.) As the afternoon came on I built one last campfire for this stay, and realized that rancid cooking oil IS a good fire-starter but kicks up a lot of black smoke as it burns. I should have remembered that. I admired the sunset and realized I'd just missed a rocket launch from Vandenburg, then sat by the fire and felt sorry for myself until it was time to cook. Yes, my memories are happy ones, but how I miss my darling! I cooked another of my darling's Superburgers in Papa's pan. It really is the perfect fire-cooking implement for something like this. My grandmother used to call it her egg pan, or maybe omelet pan although I don't recall ever seeing her make an omelet of any sort. I don't know how old the pan is, but it used to be the standard cooking implement for camping trips Dad and his father (Papa to me) took for hunting and fishing. When Dad gave me the pan, he told me that after they returned from one trip Nana took the pan and scrubbed it clean for them. Papa was furious! So I guess carbon is a badge of honor for the pan too. Papa would be proud to see me using it. Maybe he is. I sat by the fire and watched the stars and reminisced until the burger started to sizzle. I turned the pan over and waited until the burger sizzled again. Then, inside I came. Dinner was a Superburger, green salad, and (a bit too much) wine. This morning I broke camp, leaving only our campfire arrangement and some wood, ...ate the last of my wonderful smoked salmon pate, and headed out. It felt strangely like a leave-taking, as though I may not be back. I think I'm coming back, although it may not be in the few weeks I was expecting. But if I don't make it back here, I'll have finished what I needed to do. I've moved into Yuma now, at a friend's house, where I can leave the trailer and cats. I'm going to San Diego with the dog, to visit my best friends for a week. It couldn't be more different here! But I'll admit that it's nice to be plugged into 50A electrical service. I have a microwave oven! I have air conditioning! (Yes, I needed it today.) I plan to be in Yuma for much of March, once I get back from San Diego, so I should be able to take you on a bit of a culinary tour here. I just finished a giant dinner salad -- it looked a lot like last night's. Time to pack up, clean up, and get ready for tomorrow's adventures.

I don't need any new cooking gear, but this factory-seconds sale is the way I got all my All-Clad. I've never gotten a bad one, and I love the stuff I have.

I'm still trying to work out how date squares could contain salmonella. I admit to not diving deeply into the question, since it isn't something I'm likely to buy. But has anyone read carefully enough to understand the mechanism?

I picked up this little booklet at the library book giveaway in Duluth, MN just before leaving town. I've never been to Rice Creek Recreation, but found the little book appealing for its focus on wild game and its family orientation. It has amusing little sketches.. ..and a few recipes I might actually try some day, adapting them if necessary to a different form of game. Truth to tell, I thought of @Shelby when I saw it!

Thanks for the tip on the strawberries. LOL I'm one of those people who rarely, if ever, even removes the mattress tags that say not to remove them on pain of death, unless you're the purchaser! But you raise a good point. So just for you, and because it really is sensible, I removed the tag(s) just now. This is what I removed: I think the likelihood of a tag catching fire is greater than the likelihood of having a child climb up onto the stove in this particular trailer. Thanks for that safety note. 🙂 My darling strongly preferred nonstick, heavy-duty aluminum pans with long handles. I left those behind, not thinking I was likely to use them due to their size, and also because the packing job was so overwhelming. This skillet is the closest thing I have to what he liked to use: It's a couple of inches smaller in diameter than his favorite skillet. You can see that it's been thoroughly used since I bought it over 10 years ago, but for all that I liked to keep it inside to prevent soot buildup on the outside. His skillets have soot buildup as a badge of honor. As for the cast iron griddle: I thought about bringing that along, but didn't. Again, I'm not sure now whether it was One More Thing that I couldn't figure out where to put it, or it was too grody from being neglected in the weather. Instead, I brought 2 cast iron skillets, one smooth and one not: From a space- and weight-saving perspective I'm not sure it made sense, but I wanted both surfaces. I haven't mentioned until now that I also left behind my beloved $8 panini press, and I wanted something that could put grill marks onto certain foods. The smooth one is a family heirloom. Will I use them both? Time will tell. How badly will I miss that panini press? Time will also tell on that. I'm glad you like the griddle so much. It really has been handy, and I suspect many new couples will appreciate the gift. Finally: thank you so much for the comment about his Superburgers, and for hoisting a glass in our honor. Maybe I'll cook another of those tonight, and we can figuratively toast him as well as each other's travels and life lessons.

rotuts, thank you for that link. It is the correct link...and I LOVE the "read me" that pops up first!

This all began in the Panettone topic, where that ace enabler @Kerry Beal noted that @Alleguede had begun his annual panettone making. (Do look at that link! The photos are gorgeous!) In the subsequent posts, it came out that Goûter could now ship to the USA. @Alleguede gave an email address here ... it's info@gouter.ca in case you don't want to keep following links. I read somewhere in that topic that they might all be done with panettone for the season, but i can't answer that question for sure. The shout-outs in this post should help get someone's attention for an answer.

Speaking as someone who's been excavating pantry and closet storage lately 😁 I'll tell you this: the worst that can happen is that the flavor will be less than you'd like, and maybe rancid. Give it a try! If it doesn't work out, you'll be out a few extra ingredients. I doubt there's a health or safety hazard.

One of my best friends spent her teenaged years in Iran, and has been given this book recently: Bottom of the Pot: Persian Recipes and Stories (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) She hasn't cooked from it much, but so far we've liked what she's cooked from it. Have you tried its recipes?

Looks like I've discovered a few more omissions and errors. It all started when I decided that some of the potatoes are getting old. I'll be away for a week. The greens and other perishables need to be used up, or thrown away, unless they can come with me to be used. The original plan for a generous green dinner salad fell by the wayside when I thought about those potatoes. (There are more, in a different bag. These were from the oldest bag. Russets. I don't know how old they were, but they were starting to sprout.) I cut out the eyes of 2 potatoes, realized the peels were turning green and peeled down until the green was gone, then thought about the rest of the bag. Okay then. Here it is, all of it. 5 potatoes' worth. This is at least as much as my darling would have used for his beloved hash! I didn't want to make hash! I don't think I have a big enough pan for this! I rooted around in the trailer. What was the largest pan I'd packed? Had I packed any large sheet pans? (The answer to that is "no".) The largest pan I could find was my prized Sur La Table "Dutch oven", which isn't especially heavy as a Dutch oven should be, but is generous enough that it's handled our prime rib roast or beef ribs in the last couple of years. It was under all this stack: The cabinet sits next to the oven, near ground level, and is a rather awkward space. I have to work out a better arrangement for its contents. Any skillets with handles sit elsewhere, but none of my darling's prized camp skillets for fireplace or camp stove cooking got packed. I wasn't planning to do such large-batch cooking, or so I thought. It was still windy, so I cranked up the generator in order to use the range hood, and went to work. Then I figured out that the vegetable oil in the cabinet is rancid. I'm not terribly surprised. It'll be a great fire starter. I used olive oil -- which, incidentally, I had to buy the other day. (How COULD I have come away with no olive oil, no red wine vinegar, yet 3 bottles of white wine vinegar??) Then I realized that I hadn't packed a spatter guard. Of course not! All this sort of thing is always done outside. Over the fire, or over the camp stove -- which I haven't set up yet. Because hash and other frying were my darling's thing, not mine. Hmmph. I looked around in the drawer of pan covers, and found a substitute. Next up: since I was making my darling's hash, despite other plans, I had to figure out the meat to go into it. I first chose a package out of the freezer. Luck, WI is a small town a couple of hours' drive south of where I live. I discovered this meat market, and their sausages, during a trip there only a week or so after my darling had passed. Despite my despair, I'd encountered this sausage and liked it. I'd gone to the meat market and bought more. I'd forgotten that it's one solid coil. I hadn't thawed it. i put it back in the freezer. Instead, I pulled from the refrigerator this artifact from our time together: Once the potatoes were starting to brown in the olive oil, I added red bell pepper, most of the mushrooms hanging around, and coins cut from three of those Kiolbassa links. The anti-boilover lid actually makes a pretty good spatter screen. Dinner, first effort: Something wasn't quite right: probably because I hadn't added salt and certainly because I hadn't added any greens as I'd originally planned. I pulled out a jar of Trader Joe's Chili Onion Crunch and added a spoonful to my serving. Ah-HOOA! That had waay too much heat for me. I added my bowlful back to the entire pan's worth, stirred it all, and served myself again. That worked out pretty well. I like the flavors. There are leftovers -- more than I'd planned, but those potatoes needed to be cooked. And I was able to enjoy a beautiful evening sky while everything cooked, even though I wasn't out by the fire. If you look carefully, you'll see Venus about midway up the photo. I couldn't stretch the photo enough to show Jupiter and the rest of the planetary parade, but they're all there.

I agree. Some fruits preserve well, but IMO strawberries don't.

No particular horror story; nobody smeared me with it as a kid and tied me down for the ants, for instance. But I have never, ever liked strawberry ice cream, and always felt that what gets marketed down here as "Neapolitan" ice cream (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry) was a horrible cheat. Then again, I'm a big fan of chocolate. IIRC you and I also differ on garbanzos / chickpeas: I love 'em, you hate 'em. 🙂

Real strawberries? And white chocolate? Let us know how it tastes. I generally distrust strawberry-flavored anything, based on an early horror of strawberry ice cream, but I can image Gouter doing the fruit justice.

I've been loafing this morning. Part of that is because it's windy and not very pleasant outside, although I know it will be windier as the day goes on. A larger reason for my sloth now is that the low-battery alarm in the Princessmobile started flashing at around 0530. There's no sleeping (for me, anyway) when that happens. I went outside, admired the stars, and started the generator. Then I came back inside and tried to sleep. Maybe I dozed a bit, but I didn't sleep well. An hour or so later, I figured that should put paid to the battery question. Went back outside, turned off the generator, and went back to sleep. So my sleep schedule is off today. Then of course I had to have morning coffee while I read, and wrote, and contemplated the day's chores. Breakfast is the last of the Goûter chocolate panettone. It really does need to be reheated. I didn't want to restart the microwave, so I put the panettone unwrapped in the oven for a few minutes. This was also partly a test to see how easily I could start the oven. It's propane, with a sparker, and my friend and I had a lot of laughs over trying to figure out the lighting sequence the evening he came over for a ham dinner. It isn't difficult. I just have to push harder than I'd expected to get the sparker to work. The panettone stayed in here a few minutes, just enough to get warm, then came to table with butter atop it. The oven-heating method, unwrapped at least, is a guaranteed way to dry it out, but it's still delicious. The butter helped moisten it again. Kudos to @Alleguede, @Kerry Beal, and Goûter Patisserie! If the wind dies enough this evening for a campfire, I'll burn the cardboard wrapper. If not, I'll shake the crumbs out in the bushes and put the wrapper in the trash.